Go Big or Go Home

A tailwhip wasn’t the hardest trick you could do on a BMX bike, but it looked the coolest. You got some air, leaned out over the front wheel and whipped the rest of the bike around in a three-sixty. The pros could do a double-whip, but Kyle would settle for one. The trouble was, a tailwhip wasn’t something you could work up to by degrees. It was three-sixty or death, and that gap between all and nothing loomed large when Kyle stared down from the lip of the big ramp.

Kyle sat his bike at the top of the ramp, off to one side so the other riders could flow past him. Eyes closed, he listened for a voice inside himself to whisper the secret of the tailwhip. All he heard were the sounds of the other riders and the musicians across the street. Yesterday it had been bagpipes, but today it was drums and the pounding beat had his blood up. Courage came in on that primitive tide and the rhythms drowned out his fear. He was going to do it. He realized he already knew the only secret to the trick. It was the mantra of the park: “Go big or go home.”

Kyle opened his eyes in time to see Tommy go down hard. The crash didn’t expose any entrails, but if there was an omen to be read in the blood on Tommy’s face and the wreckage of his bike, it wasn’t a good one.

Go big or go home.

Kyle dipped off the edge of the ramp and down, turning his wheel for home. Tomorrow maybe, if the drummers were back, then he’d give it a shot.